1. Technical Field
This invention relates in general to carbon nanotube films, fabrics, layers, and articles and in particular to making electrically conductive articles from carbon nanotube films, fabrics, or layers for a variety of uses in circuits or the like.
2. Discussion of Related Art
The reliable fabrication of electrically conductive, ultra-thin metallic layers and electrodes in the sub-10 nm regime is problematic, see, e.g., S. Wolf, Silicon Processing for the VLSI era; Volume 2—Process Integration (Lattice Press, Sunset Beach, 1990). Metal films in this size regime are usually non-continuous and not conductive over macroscopic distances. Furthermore, these sub-10 nm films are prone to thermal damage by electrical current making them unsuitable for applications such as electrical interconnects in semiconductor devices. Thermal damage of thin metal interconnects caused by their low heat conductivities is one of the main factors inhibiting dramatic miniaturization and performance improvements of highly integrated semiconductor devices.
Conventional interconnect technologies have a tendency to suffer from thermal damage and metal diffusion eroding the performance of the semiconductor devices especially from degradation of the electrical properties. These effects become even more pronounced with size reduction in current generation 0.18 um and 0.13 um structures, e.g. by metal diffusion through ultra-thin gate oxide layers.
There is therefore a need in the art for conductive elements that may operate well in contexts having high current densities or in extreme thermal conditions. This includes circuit contexts with very small feature sizes but includes other high current density extreme thermal environment contexts as well. There is also a need for conductive elements that will be less likely to diffuse undesirable amounts of contaminants into other circuit elements.